Without art, life is impossible (interview with O. Lenárd)

Ondrej Lenárd is conducting the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra for the second season after taking the baton from Vladimír Válek, who built up a first class orchestra.

* You were born during the war in the small town of Krompachy in Spiš in Slovakia, in an immensely poor region far from any centres of culture. Where did your love of music come from?

I have the impression that it came from that poverty. They say that when somebody’s hungry and has nothing to eat, he sings. I think that great art has been born out of that poverty. It’s never born out of wealth. My mother was a church organist and my father was a joiner, but he also repaired musical instruments. I remember once how my father brought home a broken, actually a completely destroyed, piano. And he started thinking about how to fix it. He succeeded and the piano plays to this day. It’s at my sister’s. Father also played the fiddle and he sat me down at that repaired piano and I had to play with him. I didn’t know notation and just played by ear. When I played out of key I got a smack. But playing by ear is an excellent education; I’m grateful to dad for it today. To this day, I can catch any melody, even perhaps an Arabian one, and immediately play it. That was my first music school.

* I hope your education didn’t stop there.

We really were far from any kind of cultural centre. But imagine that when I was going to elementary school, in the year 1952–1953, the school organised an excursion to the opera in Košice. I don’t know whether that’d be possible today. To this day, I remember that we saw the opera Faust and Marguerite and I was completely entranced. It was a terribly powerful experience. Also in small villages there were cantors who played some instrument and also taught it. In our case, it was the teacher Mrs. Töröková. The other day my sister and I found a photograph of her and all her pupils. There were 80 of them. In such a small village! I realised what a great amount of pioneering work that woman did. Naturally, the level was rather basic. Whoever had greater abilities had to go to Spišská Nová Ves or Košice. I played the violin, piano, accordion and organ, but was self-taught in everything. So dad literally bundled me off to the music school in Spišská Nová Ves. I took my violin to school and at 12:30 I sat on the train and went off to music school. I had an hour of piano lessons and then an hour of violin and went back. I occasionally fell asleep on the train out of tiredness. Finally I ended up at the music school in Košice.

* How did you go from the violin and piano to conducting?

By pure coincidence. My father took me to a film entitled Eroica. It had wonderful shots of Beethoven conducting. I was so transported by it that I bought a gramophone record of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B Minor, along with the score, which I naturally couldn’t read. Dad carved me a baton and I “conducted” it non-stop. It began to ferment in me. But I didn’t realise that music school is terribly long – your whole life. Near the end of my last year at an 11-year school I applied to the Košice Conservatory, but asking if they’d take me into the second or third year, as I had my school leaving exams. They took me, but into the first year. I secretly sent an application to the Academy of Performing Arts. I also secretly went to Bratislava for an entrance interview. I wasn’t yet 18. I had a piece of wood instead of a baton and one small pocket score. Of 21 applicants they chose five of us, and I was the fifth.

* You began working very quickly. Some artists wait their whole lives for an engagement at the National Theatre but you became choirmaster at the Slovak National Theatre (SND) at 19. That must have aroused huge envy.

Frankly, I never even noticed it. I didn’t have time to. As I hadn’t been to a conservatory I was lacking some theory, so I had to catch up at night. But when I was in first year a friend brought me to the famous choirmaster Vojtech Adamec, who ran a 100-member choir of Slovak teachers. Václav Talich once said that every conductor who wants to conduct an orchestra should begin with a choir, so that his hands learn to sing like the human voice. Vojtech Adamec led me there. During the holidays I got two letters. In one the department told me they’d agreed to my request for a transfer from studying choral conducting to symphonic orchestra conducting under professor Ľudovít Rajter. In the second letter the management of the SND offered me a place as second choirmaster. It was like I was in the story Jiřík’s Vision. I was 19 and scared stiff. The whole summer I learned to read scores and play from sheet music so that I’d pass muster.

* The opera world is very tough. How did the choir members, all of whom were older and some of whom could have been your parents, take to a 19-year-old youth?

I don’t know why, but I didn’t notice that at all. I was strict on them – every imperfection bothered me. I even walked among the singers and listened to how they sang. So you can imagine what that was like for them. I was very demanding. But I worked hard myself, so none of them could say anything. During rehearsals of arrangements I always asked the conductor to let me conduct. And I was able to watch my hands. Opera conducting is a bit different from orchestra conducting. Where can you learn it? What teacher teaches it? Nobody. It’s just experience. I’m immensely grateful for it, though I had to do school and the theatre at the same time, and I found it very demanding.

* In the end you ended up as principal conductor and head of the opera at that same National Theatre.

Things didn’t go that easily. For eight years I asked them to let me conduct. Finally the conductor Ladislav Holoubek smiled on me. He was meant to conduct Flotow’s Martha but he had his hand bandaged up and couldn’t conduct that evening. And he recommended me. That was the beginning, but even then I didn’t stand at the conductor’s stand for a long time. So I entered a selection process for the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava, which I won.

* You only have praise for the Radio Orchestra.

It was a huge gift from God for me. The microphone is an uncomprising critic that can’t be fooled. And every recording that was done had to be perfect.

* That’s true. But you record in sequences. To get it perfect, you can repeat it as many times as you like.

Do you think that a jumper training for the high jump always jumps the same? When you record a sequence and there’s a mistake then you play it again. But with every iteration, concentration falls off. The best thing is not to say that it’s bad, but to immediately say why it’s bad and record it well. That’s what radio teaches you. The radio orchestra is not just a recording orchestra that records in sequences. It has high criteria in terms of precision, but for the reason that it has to appear outside – it has to go on stage and play works in full.

* You are known as a real perfectionist who is tough on players. I believe that on several occasions that wasn’t to your benefit.

When I was at the radio I demanded above all things perfect preparedness on the part of the players. I also need to handle the score in such a way that I can’t get caught with my pants down. The players don’t forgive me anything either. For me the greatest blessing is when the orchestra accepts me as one of them. There’s a symbiosis in it. But it doesn’t always happen. The revolution took place and the orchestra decided to vote as to whether I had their confidence. I came to the stand and they told me the result. Fifty-six percent expressed confidence in me and 44 percent were against. So I said to them: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s hard to ride a one-pedalled bike up a hill. Goodbye.” I was unemployed for a year and a half. In 1991, the director and chairman of the artistic council of the Slovak Philharmonic approached me with an offer to join as principal conductor. My jaw dropped. For 20 years I wasn’t allowed to conduct the Slovak Philharmonic, to this day I don’t know the reason, and suddenly such an offer. So I joined and again demanded hard work. I have a principle that anybody who buys a ticket to a concert has the right to beautiful music, not a mockery. As soon as you start to tolerate mistakes, the orchestra writes you off, in any case. At the Slovak Philharmonic the players also voted as to whether I had their confidence. Three times. After the third time I got annoyed and immediately handed in my notice. I came to the same end at the Slovak Theatre. Where I’d been assistant, then principal conductor and in the end director of the opera. I always walked due to the incomprehension of the management, who’d staked their claim to something other than a principal conductor. You won’t find that anywhere else. The final straw came from the new director of the opera, who one year after the premiere of Othello took the production away from me without the blink of an eye, without picking up the phone, without an apology. So I slammed the door and vowed I’d never have anything to do with the Slovak National Theatre again. The final nail in the coffin was the Academy of Performing Arts, my school. When I was 65 the deacon told me that it wasn’t in the school’s interest for me to teach conducting. So I packed my stuff and went. And I don’t work in Slovakia any more.

* After all those twists and turns, the reception you got from PRSO must’ve been a balm.

I’ve got to say that my cooperation with the forerunner of the PRSO began in 1974–1975, when I was that orchestra’s permanent guest. I appreciated it greatly, because I saw what a modest and at the same time hard-working collective it was. In 2012 I had some performance at the National Theatre and got a call from Mr. [Jan] Simon [intendant of the PRSO] saying that the artistic council and the orchestra had decided to offer me the post of principal conductor. Perhaps you won’t believe me, but it warmed my heart. My relationship to the Radio is great and the idea that at the end of my career, and after my inglorious end in Slovakia, I’d receive such an honour from one of the renowned orchestras of Europe was almost unbelievable. I respect the orchestra highly because it allows itself to be influenced by music, is very modest and has a great appetite for work. Conducting such an orchestra is a blessing. Working with the orchestra is a joy.

* You encountered a similar orchestra in Japan. You were the principal conductor and musical director of the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra and were later principal conductor, today honorary, of the Tokyo Philharmonic. How is it working with an orchestra and players who may be really good but have a different cultural background?

I must above all thank the conductor Zdeněk Košler, who brought me to Japan. I’ve now visited Japan 65 times. When I started years ago, the programme included Mozart, Dvořák, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Prokofjev and a little Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Today programmes there are based on 20th century music. Mahler is huge there, for instance. They realised that they had to work on themselves. And they respect artists. Zdeněk Košler was nothing less than an idol. Once I asked why they invited conductors from our country; after all, they have enough money to pay conductors from America. And my manager said that nobody else puts as much into music as Slavs. I don’t stop rehearsals; I shout or sing at the musicians. With a terrible voice, but I sing. Once I noticed that one part of the orchestra was playing and the other was writing on their notation. So I asked what they were doing and they’d written down that whole dynamic range that I’d sung to them! From that time they still play the same way. But the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra had to merge with the Tokyo Philharmonic into a company with 190 players, so that the ensemble could play at the opera, give concerts and record at the same time. And that was too much for me. The 12 hours on the plane are also tiring for me now. So I gradually extricated myself from that position and stayed only as honorary principal conductor.

* As well as symphony orchestras you’ve conducted operas. In North and South America, Europe. Was that out of nostalgia or did you want to take some time out with a different genre?

I’ll answer that simply. I was raised on opera. That’s where I started. Once I read an interview with Herbert von Karajan, who was asked why he cultivated both genres. Karajan answered that the drama that exists in opera has to be absorbed and then brought to symphonic work. And when you bring that symphonic nature to the sound of an opera orchestra you have a wonderful symbiosis of both genres. It enriches it! I can’t stand the separation of conductors into opera and symphonic. Karajan is right. A conductor has to use the experience of both genres. Many people ask me when for instance I conduct an orchestra in Bratislava how is it that the orchestra sounds different from usual. I say it’s because I know what I want to get out of that orchestra, how it has to sound plastic. It has to constantly pulse.

* Why is it that a piece always sounds different depending on who’s conducting it?

That’s a terribly complicated question. We call it plastic. If you have a theme and then an instrument that plays it, it must of course be stronger than the instruments that accompany it. But not by much. That’s also the problem of the relationship of the human voice and orchestra. It’s simply a question of tuning. A conductor has to know what each instrument can afford, that the human voice isn’t an instrument, what kind of sound he wants to achieve. They say that conductors have a third ear in the back of their heads. And that “hears” how the sound in the hall is. It sounds different in the Rudolfinum, different in Reduta in Bratislava. And suddenly you know that some instrument or group has to push and which maybe has to ease off. The resulting work has to be a palette, it has to have a multicoloured sheen, it can’t be monotonous. It’s immensely difficult to find a mutual balance.

* What’s your relationship to opera directors?

I have a reputation for arguments with directors. Personally I think that when Verdi wrote La traviata on the basis of the Dumas novel then I can’t turn her into a prostitute on Wenceslas Square. If a director wants to use works of genius to cure his complexes, to turn them into a mess, then that’s not on. I don’t understand some directors. If it at least had some logic, if I could explain it, that’d be OK. The meaning of art is to address the viewer, the listener, the audience member. If it doesn’t address them, it’s not art. The director must serve the music. When I did Othello in Bratislava the director had the idea of having Iago disappear at the end. But that’s as if he got an amnesty. I conducted, quiet music, the lights gradually go down and suddenly I see Iago in his civvies leaving the stage and going into the auditorium. It completely destroyed the beautiful closing chords.

* Opera isn’t just a complex art form, it’s also very expensive. At the same time, they’re making savings everywhere. In the theatres where you’ve conducted alone for instance, last month the Austrian minister of culture ordered savings of 10 million euros at the Wiener Staatsoper, subsidies for the Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona have been reduced by 25 percent, in Great Britain there is a debate as to whether subsidies for theatres should be done away with completely. In the Netherlands two symphony orchestras have been dissolved. Czech artists march on Wenceslas Square with “Save Live Culture” banners, and Czech regional theatres are sounding the alarm. What’s your view of that?

I would begin somewhat pejoratively. Subsidies for the State Opera in Vienna are being reduced but there’s money for the opera ball? According to what right? They wonder that people stand around and throw stones at participants. It costs a hellish amount – and there’s a crisis! For me it’s a warning that the decline of culture is starting, and with that decline comes the decline of the culture of the nation. And in a city where for centuries it built up its position as having the most conservatories, along comes some official and reduces subsidies. The merger of the National Theatre and the State Opera – that’s a crime. I’m afraid that it’s a deliberate subduing of cultural values, of ethical values. What comes at us today from the radio and television – that can nurture the nation? That is spiritual nourishment? Look at how people behave towards one another. Disrespect reigns among people. People go to art to soothe their souls. If we start limiting art, what’ll remain to us later? What bread will feed us? If politicians don’t realise that without art, life is impossible, then we’ve given up on civilisation. On the occasion of my 70th birthday I gave a concert with the PRSO in Bratislava. That was a great satisfaction to me and I wanted the TV to at least make a recording of it. So I went around to several big sponsors. And the offers were for 1500 euros or so. I thanked them and left. I realised that it really is the beginning of the end. For some shows they find enough millions that the opera could create two, if not three productions. So I ask – where is the hierarchy of values? Has great art ever been able to pay for itself? At the same time, this nation’s most beautiful jewels were created in that way.

* At the beginning you said that great art is born out of poverty. Maybe it’s actually an effort to bring about great art?

That’d be hard. I’m scared by it. I’d just like, when some day I’m playing the timpani in the orchestra in heaven, not to have to see that the great art of conducting, which was cultivated here by conductors like Václav Talich, Karel Ančerl, Václav Neumann, Jaroslav Krombholc, Libor Pešek and others, has fallen into oblivion. That’d be an absolute tragedy.

Ondrej Lenárd (71) studied conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. In 1974 he was named laureate at the International Conducting Competition in Budapest. He has regularly conducted at the Prague State Opera, the opera of the National Theatre and at several world renowned opera houses, such as the Wiener Staatsoper, the Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the State Opera in Budapest and the Houston Grand Opera in the USA, and a number of symphony orchestras. He has an incredible 1,300 recordings to his name and records for the labels OPUS, Pacific-Naxos and Marco Polo. He taught conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts. He is a specialist in 19th and 20th century music. In 1998 the Slovak president awarded him the Order of Ľudovít Štúr, 1st class, while the Matej Bel University bestowed the title Doctor honoris causa on him.